The Gospel of St. Matthew

Schmidt Number: S-2274

On-line since: 15th January, 2017

LECTURE THREE

Berne,September 3, 1910

Before
coming to our main theme I want to make a brief addition
to something that was said in the lecture yesterday. I
spoke of the fact that really significant happenings in
the evolution of humanity can be characterized by
expressions derived front processes in the Cosmos. I also
emphasized how impossible it is to speak intelligibly and
adequately in the words of ordinary language about thc
great mysteries of existence.

The best
way to characterize the deeply significant inter-action
between Hermes and Moses, the two great pupils of
Zarathustra, is to present it as a repetition, a
re-enactment, of a cosmic process, viewed in the light of
occult science.

In order to
picture this cosmic process, let us again look back to
the time when our Earth had separated from the Sun, when
each with an independent centre was pursuing a further
life of its own in the Cosmos. We can picture that in the
far, far distant past, the substantiality of Earth +Sun
formed a single whole, one great cosmic body which then
divided into two. In saying this it must be remembered
that other, parallel cosmic happenings — the
splitting off of the other planets belonging to our solar
system — are being left out of consideration here.
For our immediate purpose the time sequence of these
other severances need not be taken into account; it is
enough to say that a separation once took place, as the
result of which the Sun became an entity and the Earth
another.

It must
also be remembered that this separation took place in an
age when the globe now called ‘Earth’ still
contained within it the substantiality of the present
Moon. Earth + Moon on thc one side confronted Sun on the
other. All the forces, both spiritual and physical, that
had been at work before this separation, divided: the
coarser elements, the coarser, cruder activities,
remained with thc Earth, whereas the higher,
spiritual-ethereal activities accompanied the Sun. We
must picture to ourselves that for long ages Earth and
Sun continued their evolution separately. To begin with,
everything going forth from the Sun to the Earth was
entirely different in character from the forces streaming
from the Sun to-day. Earth-existence, Earth-life, was
inward, enclosed, receiving little life from the Sun,
little of what rayed down spiritually, taking physical
expression, from the Sun.

In this
first period of separation from the Sun, the Earth
threatened to become barren, arid, mummified. And if the
Moon had continued to remain in thc Earth the life that
is present on our planet to-day would never have been
possible. While the Moon was still contained in the
Earth, the life pouring from the Sun could not be fully
effective; this was only possible at a later time, when
the Earth had separated from itself the substantiality of
what is now Moon, and with it the spiritual Beings
connected with the Moon.

But very
much else is connected with the separation of the Moon
from the Earth. It must be realised that everything we
call life on our Earth to-day evolved by slow degrees,
and Spiritual Science indicates the successive conditions
or states of existence which made life possible.
Previously there was the Old Saturn-existence, then the
Old Sun-existence, then the Old Moon-existence, and
finally our Earth-existence. The separation of the Sun
and also the earlier union of Earth and Sun were
therefore preceded by other, quite different evolutionary
processes. And when the Earth began to exist in its
present form, it was still united with the substance of
all the planets that belong to our solar system and were
not separated off until later — the process of
separation and differentiation being brought about by
forces previously operating during the three preceding
evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old. Sun, Old
Moon.

We know
that during the Old Saturn-existence there was no matter,
no substance, such as is present to-day; there were no
solid bodies, no fluids, even no gaseous, vaporous or
aeriform masses. Old Saturn was composed solely of warmth
— differentiated warmth. We can therefore say: the
body of ancient Saturn consisted of warmth only;
everything evolved within the element of warmth. I need
not emphasize here that one who ventures to make such a
statement is fully aware of how impossible it is for
modern physics to conceive of a body consisting solely of
warmth; he is also aware that ‘warmth’ is for
modem physics a state or condition only, not anything
having the character of substance. However that may be,
we are not concerned to-day with modern physics but only
with the truth. [ Note 01 ]

Evolution
advanced from the warmth-body of Saturn to the next stage
— the stage of Old Sun. There, as described in thc
book Occult Science, the warmth-body of Saturn
densified. Some of the warmth remained, but the
warmth-body densified, in part, to the gaseous, aeriform
sate of Old Sun. The process was not only one of
densification but also of rarefication — a
development upwards, to light. Hence we can say: passing
from the warmth-condition of Old Saturn to the stage of
Old Sun, we have a cosmic body comprising air, warmth and
light.

When the
Old Sun-existence advanced to the stage of the Old
Moon-existence which preceded that of our Earth, again
there was densification and again rarefication. The fluid
or watery condition was added to the gaseous, but a
change also took place on the other side, in the
direction as it wry or spiritualisation, etherealisation.
During the Old Moon stage, not only was there light but
also the sound-ether or chemical ether. What is here
called sound-ether is not to be identified with
what we call physical sound or tone. The latter is only a
reflection of what is experienced by clairvoyant
consciousness as the 'Harmony of the Spheres', as etheric
sound or tone weaving as a living power through the
Universe. In speaking of this ether and of this sound we
are therefore speaking of something far more spiritual,
far more ethereal than ordinary sound.

Densification to the solid state took place when Old Moon
evolved to Earth. On Old Moon there were no solid bodies
such as exist on Earth, where the solid condition came
into existence for the first time. On the Earth,
therefore, WC now have, on the one side, warmth, the
gaseous and watery states, and solid bodies; and on the
other side, light-ether, sound-ether, and then
life-ether. Evolution on the Earth has reached this
stage. Thus on the Earth there are seven elemental states
or conditions, whereas on Old Saturn there was only the
one state — that of warmth.

When our
Earth emerged from the cosmic night at the beginning of
its existence, when it was still united with the Sun and
with the other planets, we must picture it living and
weaving in these seven elemental conditions. But with the
separation from the Sun something very remarkable took
place.

Warmth and
light are present for external life to-day since it is
affected by the influences that stream from the Sun to
the Earth and belong to the whole domain of
sense-perception; but the sound-ether and the life-ether
do not belong to this domain. The workings of the
sound-ether manifest themselves only in chemical
combinations and dissolutions, that is to say, in
processes operating in material existence. What
we call the working of the life-ether as it streams in
from the Sun cannot be directly perceived by man in the
sense that light is perceptible when through the senses
he distinguishes light from darkness. The active workings
or effects of life are perceived in living beings, but
not the instreaming life-ether itself. Hence science too
is compelled to admit that life per se is a
riddle.—

Thus the
two highest kinds of etheric manifestation — the
life-ether and the sound-ether — although they
proceed from the Sun as extremely delicate emanations
— are not directly manifest in
Earth-existence. Although these emanations ray down from
the Sun, they are hidden from ordinary perception. Yet in
modern existence too, something corresponding to what
lives in the sound-ether and life-ether is perceptible on
the Earth in the inner nature of man. The direct
influences and effects of the life-ether and the
sound-ether (the harmony of the spheres) are not
externally perceptible on the Earth, but what takes
effect in the constitution of man is perceptible.

The easiest
way in which I can explain this will be to re-mind you of
the process of human evolution on Earth. In very ancient
times and on into the Atlantean epoch, man was endowed
with a faculty of clairvoyance enabling him to behold not
only a material world as he does to-day but also the
spiritual backgrounds of material existence. This was
possible for man because in those ancient times there was
an intermediate state between the waking consciousness
that is ours to-day and what we call the sleeping state.
In the waking state man perceived the things of the
physical world of the senses; in the sleeping state
to-day he neither perceives nor is aware of anything at
all; he simply goes on living. — That at any rate
is true of the great majority of people. If you were to
investigate clairvoyantly man's life during sleep you
would make startling discoveries — although only
those people who look no deeper than the surface of
things would be taken aback by them.

While man
is asleep his astral body and Ego are outside his
physical and etheric bodies. But it must not be imagined
that astral body and Ego during sleep are like a misty
cloud hovering in the vicinity of the physical body. What
an inferior kind of astral clairvoyance sees in the form
of a cloud and which we call the astral body, is only the
very crudest beginning of what the human being reveals
during sleep. If anyone were to regard this cloudlike
formation near the physical and etheric bodies as the
only phenomenon of importance he would simply be basing
himself upon the lowest forms of astral clairvoyance. The
truth is that during sleep man is a being of vast
magnitude. At the moment of going to sleep, the inner
forces in the astral body and in the Ego actually begin
to expand over the whole solar system, to become part of
it. From every direction man draws into his astral body
and into his Ego forces which strengthen this life during
sleep, and on waking he contracts into the narrower
confines within his skin and pours into these what he has
absorbed during the night from the whole solar system.
That is why medieval occultists too called this spiritual
body of man the ‘astral’ body, because it is
united with the worlds of the stars and draws its forces
from them. During sleep at night, then, man actually
expands over the whole solar system.

What is it
that permeates the astral body during sleep when it is
outside the physical and etheric bodies? It is the
weaving life of the harmonies of the spheres, forces that
can otherwise operate only in thc sound-ether. Just as
when a violin bow is drawn across the edge of a metal
disc strewn with sand the vibrations pulsing through the
air also pulsate through the sand and produce the
well-known Chladni sound-figures, so do the harmonies of
the spheres vibrate through the human being during sleep
and bring order again into what has been cast into
disorder during the day through his sense-perceptions.
The weaving forces of the life-ether also permeate him
during sleep, but he is entirely unaware of this inner
life of his sheaths when he is separated from the
physical and etheric bodies. In the normal state, man has
the power of perception only when he again plunges down
into the physical and etheric bodies, using the outer
organs of the etheric body for thinking and those of the
physical body for sense-perception.

But in
ancient times there were intermediate states between
waking life and sleep, states which can be induced to-day
only by abnormal means and because of the dangers
inseparable from such conditions, ought never to be
induced. In Atlantean times, however, these faculties of
perception that functioned normally in the intermediate
states between waking and sleeping, enabled man to be
transported into the domain of the forces living and
weaving in the sound-ether and the life-ether. In other
words: through clairvoyance in its old form, man was able
in that distant past to be aware of what was being
radiated to him by the Sun as the harmony of the spheres
and the life that pulses through cosmic space —
although the earthly effects of the sound-ether
and the life-ether were perceptible only in living beings
in the external world.

Such
experiences gradually ceased to be possible; with the
loss of the old clairvoyance the door closed against
these perceptions and something different came into
being, namely the inner power of cognition. Only then did
man learn to reflect, to ponder, to cogitate. What we
to-day call reflection about the things of the physical
world, in other words an inner activity, began to develop
only when the old clairvoyance was fading away. In the
early epochs of Atlantis, man had no inner life such as
he has to-day — an inner life of feelings, sentient
experiences, thoughts and mental concepts, which actually
constitute the creative impulse in culture and
civilization. In the intermediate states between waking
and sleeping his whole being was outpoured in a spiritual
world and the material world of the senses seemed to be
veiled in mist.

With the
gradual disappearance of the old clairvoyance, external
life increased in importance. A faint reflection of the
harmony of the spheres and of the working of the
life-ether was present in man's inner nature. But the
reflection of the harmony of the spheres faded away to
the same extent as man became inwardly aware of
feelings and perceptions which mirrored the external
world to him and constitute his inner life to-day. To the
extent to which he felt himself an ‘I’, an
Ego-being, his perception of the divine, all-pervading
life-ether vanished from him. His condition had to be
acquired at the cost of being deprived of certain aspects
of external life. As an earthly being, man felt that the
life he could no longer experience as streaming directly
from the Sun was enclosed within him; and in his inner
life to-day He has only a faint reflection of the sublime
cosmic life, of the harmony of the spheres and the
life-ether.

The
development of man's faculty of cognition was also a kind
of repetition of the Earth's own evolution. The Earth,
when it separated from the Sun and became self-enclosed,
would have hardened completely if all the substances left
within it after the separation had been retained. The
Sun's influence could not, to begin with, find entrance
into the process of thc Earth's evolution and this state
of things lasted until the Moon was separated from the
Earth, together with all those substances and qualities
that were making it impossible for the Earth to receive
direct influences and forces from the Sun. Thus it was
through having cast out the Moon that the Earth was able
to receive the influences and forces of the now separated
Sun. The Earth sent part of itself, the Moon, towards the
Sun, in the opposite direction to that in which it had
itself separated from the Sun, and the Moon then
reflected back to the Earth the influences of the Sun,
just as outwardly it reflects its light. The separation
of the Moon from the Earth was an event of untold
significance: the Earth had opened itself to the
influences and forces of the Sun.

A cosmic
event of this kind had necessarily to be re-enacted in
the life of man as well. It was only when the Earth had
long since opened itself to the workings of the Sun that
the right point of time arrived for man to shut himself
off from the direct influences of the Sun. The direct
influences and forces of thc Sun were still active in the
clairvoyance of Atlantean man. And just as there had come
a time when the Earth began to harden, so too there came
a time for man when he withdrew into his own inner
nature, developed an inner life and could no longer
receive the direct workings of the Sun. This process of
the development of an inner life, when man could no
longer be open to the Sun's influences and could receive
only faint reflections within himself of the workings of
the life-ether, the sound-ether, the harmonies of the
spheres — this process lasted for long ages, right
on into the post-Atlantean era.

In the
earliest epochs of Atlantean evolution men had been
directly aware of the Sun's influences. Then they shut
them-selves off; and when these influences could no
longer penetrate into them and their own inner life
asserted itself strongly, it was only in the sacred
Mysteries, through the practice of what may be called
‘Yoga’ that the spiritual powers of the
pupils could be trained as it were to defy the normal
conditions of Earth-existence and become directly aware
of the workings of the Sun. Thus in the second half of
the Atlantean epoch there were sanctuaries, appropriately
called ‘Oracles’, where from among a humanity
no longer able in a normal way to be aware of the direct
workings of the sound-ether and the life-ether, pupils
and dedicated disciples of the sacred wisdom were so
trained that by first suppressing all perception through
the senses, they could become aware of the manifestations
of these higher ethers.

In places
where genuine spiritual science was cultivated, this
possibility actually remained in the post-Atlantean epoch
— so persistently indeed that even external
science, without understanding the meaning of it, has
preserved a tradition originating in the School of
Pythagoras to the effect that the harmonies of the
spheres can become audible. But external science
immediately turns anything of the nature of the harmony
of the spheres into an abstraction — which of
course it is not — and has no inkling of the
reality. In the Pythagorean Schools the power to become
aware of the harmony of the spheres was understood to be
the re-opening of man's being to the sound-ether and to
the divine life-ether.

It was
Zarathustra or Zoroaster who had proclaimed with the
greatest power and splendour that behind the Sun
radiating its light and warmth to the Earth there is
something which as the activity of the sound-ether and
indeed of the life-ether is only feebly reflected in
man's inner life. If we endeavour to translate his
teaching into modern language, we can say that he taught
his pupils as follows. — He said to them: When you
look upwards to the Sun you are aware of the beneficial
warmth and light streaming from it to the Earth; but if
you develop higher organs, if you develop your faculty of
spiritual perception, you can become aware of the Sun
Being behind the physical Sun and its life; and then you
become aware of the workings of the sound-ether and
within these the essence of life!

Zarathustra
spoke to his pupils of Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazdao, the great
Sun Aura, as the spiritual reality behind the physical
workings of the Sun. ‘Ahura Mazdao’ can
therefore also be translated as the ‘Great
Wisdom’ in contrast to the meagre wisdom evolved by
men to-day. Man becomes aware of the Great Wisdom when he
beholds the spiritual essence of the Sun, the great Sun
Aura.

A poet,
gazing back to the remote past in the evolution of
humanity, was able to point in the following words to
what the spiritual investigator knows to be a truth:

Disciples
of aestheticism regard this simply as euphony and quote
it as an outstanding example of poetic licence. They have
no inkling that a poet of Goethe's calibre is describing
actual realities when he writes: ‘The sun-orb sings
his ancient round’ — that is to say, in the
way known to ancient humanity, and known even to-day to
one who is initiated.

Zarathustra
had imparted this mighty truth to his pupils,
particularly to the two among them who can be said to
have been his most intimate disciples and were incarnated
later on as Hermes and Moses. But Zarathustra gave the
instruction on what lies behind the radiant body of the
Sun in two quite different forms. The instruction given
to Hermes enabled him to receive the influence streaming
directly from the Sun. Moses, on the other hand, was
inspired in such a way that he preserved the secret of
the Sun-wisdom as though in a memory.

If in the
light of what is said in the book Occult Science we
picture the Earth after its separation from the Sun, and
then the departure of the Moon-forces from the Earth
after which the Earth opened itself to the Sun, we find
Venus and Mercury between Earth and Sun. Dividing the
whole space between Sun and Earth into three, we can say:
the Earth separated from the Sun and sent forth the Moon
towards the Sun. Then Venus and Mercury separated off
from the Sun and came towards the Earth. Venus and
Mercury, therefore, move from the Sun towards the Earth;
the Moon goes from the Earth towards the Sun.

Conditions
in the evolution of humanity reflect conditions in the
Cosmos. The Sun-wisdom contained in the revelations of
Zarathustra had been transmitted by him on the one side
to Hermes and on the other to Moses. In Hermes there
lived the Sun-wisdom radiating from the astral body of
Zarathustra that had been transmitted to him; the wisdom
living in Moses was like a separate planet that had still
to develop towards what radiated directly from the Sun.
Just as the Earth, by relinquishing the Moon, opened
itself to the influence of ,the Sun, so did the wisdom of
Moses open itself to receive the Sun-wisdom radiating
directly from Zarathustra. And these two forms of wisdom,
the Earth-wisdom of Moses and the Sun-wisdom of
Zarathustra as imparted to Hermes, came into con-tact in
Egypt, where the teachings of Moses encountered those of
Hermes. What Moses had received from Zarathustra in the
far distant past, he wakened to life within his own being
and transmitted it to his people. We have to conceive of
this as a process analogous to the emergence of the
Moon-substantiality from the Earth.

The wisdom
transmitted by Moses to his people can also be called
Jahve- or Jehovah-wisdom — the name which, if
rightly understood, epitomises it. We can also understand
why old traditions speak of Jahve or Jehovah as a Moon
God. This is frequently stated but is comprehensible only
when these profound connections arc known. Just as the
Earth cast out the Moon, sending it towards the Sun, so
too the path of the Earth-wisdom of Moses inevitably led
towards Hermes who possessed the direct wisdom of
Zarathustra in the astral body that had been bequeathed.
The wisdom of Moses, having made contact with Hermes, had
then itself to evolve, and we have already described how
its development continued until the age of David, when in
David himself, the royal warrior and psalmist of the
Hebrew people, Hermetic or Mercury-wisdom arose in a new
form. We have also heard how the wisdom of Moses made
still closer contact with the Sun-wisdom during the time
of the Babylonian captivity, when Zarathustra himself,
then bearing the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was the
teacher of the Hebraic Initiates during the captivity. In
the wisdom of Moses, therefore, we see a re-enactment of
the cosmic process of the separation of Earth from Sun
and of subsequent happenings on the Earth.

The wise
men among the ancient Hebrews and all who were aware of
these connections were filled with deepest reverence.
They felt as though direct revelations were being
vouchsafed to them from cosmic spaces and cosmic
existence. And a personality such as Moses seemed to them
to be a messenger of the cosmic Powers themselves. This
they felt — and We too must feel something of the
kind if we desire genuinely to understand ancient times.
Otherwise, all our learning is no more than empty
abstraction.

It was
essential that what had streamed from Zarathustra and had
been transmitted to posterity through Hermes and Moses
should also evolve to a higher stage and appear again in
a different, more advanced form. To this end it was
necessary that Zarathustra himself, the Individuality who
had previously bequeathed only the astral body and the
etheric body, should be able to appear on the Earth in a
physical body, in order that this too might be offered
up. Here we have a beautiful illustration of progress. In
his life in the very distant past, Zarathustra had given
the impulse to post-Atlantean evolution in ancient
Iranian culture. Then he bequeathed his astral body in
order to inaugurate a. new form of culture through
Hermes, and he bequeathed his etheric body to Moses. He
had thus bequeathed two of his sheaths. Opportunity had
now to be afforded him to offer up his physical body as
well, for the great mystery of the evolution of humanity
demanded the offering of the three bodies by one single
individual. The third act still ahead of Zarathustra was
the offering of the physical body, and this required very
special measures of preparation. I have already indicated
how the particular kind of life lived by the Hebrew
people throughout the generations made possible the
preparation of the physical body that could eventually be
offered up by Zarathustra as his third great act. This
preparation demanded that what elsewhere had been direct,
outwardly oriented spiritual perception — the
astral vision which in the Turanians had become
decadent—should be trans-formed into an inner
activity.

This is the
secret of the Hebrew people. Whereas in the Turanians the
forces inherited from ancient times produced organs of
external clairvoyance, in the Hebrew people these forces
turned inwards, organising the inner constitution of the
body. Hence the Hebrews were the people destined to feel
and to experience inwardly what during the Atlantean age
men had seen outspread behind the single physical
objects. Jahve or Jehovah — the name consciously
uttered and proclaimed by the Hebrew people — was
the ‘Great Spirit’ revealed to ancient
clairvoyance behind all things and beings and now
concentrated into a unity. And it is also indicated that
in a very special way the progenitor of the ancient
Hebrews had been endowed with this inner organic
constitution.

Let me
again repeat that the pictorial accounts of ancient
happenings contained in sagas and legends are nearer to
the truth than the picture of evolution pieced together
by modern anthropological research from evidence provided
by excavations and fragments of monuments. In most eases
the old legends are corroborated by spiritual-scientific
investigation. I say ‘in most cases’ and not
‘in all’ because I have not investigated
every one of them; but it is very probable that the above
holds good for all genuinely ancient legends. Thus when
we enquire into the origin of the Hebrew people, we are
led back, not to what modern anthropologists surmise, but
to an actual progenitor named in the Bible. Abraham or
Abram is a living figure and what the Talmud legend says
of this original ancestor is true.

According
to the story, the father of Abraham is a captain in the
service of that legendary but nevertheless real
personality called ‘Nimrod’ in the Bible
(Genesis X, 8-9). It is announced to Nimrod by those who
understand the signs of the times as revealed in dreams
that many kings and rulers will be overthrown by his
captain's son. Nimrod is seized with fear and orders that
the child be killed. Such is the legend, and its truth is
confirmed by occult investigation. Abraham's father
resorts to subterfuge and presents another man's child to
Nimrod. His own child, Abraham, is reared in a cave.
— Abraham is the first in whom the forces formerly
operating as the faculties of external clairvoyance
turned inwards to become the powers that were to lead to
inner consciousness of the Divine. This complete reversal
of forces is indicated in the legend by saying that by
thc grace of God the child was able to suck milk from the
fingers of his own right hand during the three years he
lived in the cave. This process of self-nourishment, in
other words the penetration of the forces formerly used
for the old clairvoyance into the inner constitution of
man, is illustrated in a wonderful way in Abraham, the
progenitor of thc Hebrew people. — If their real
foundations are understood, legends of this kind are so
convincing that we realise why old narratives could only
convey in pictures what lay behind their contents. But
these pictures were able to evoke feelings — even
if not actual consciousness — of the great truths.
And that sufficed in those ancient times. Abraham, then,
was the first man in whom the faculties of divine wisdom,
divine vision, were reflected inwardly in an entirely
human form, as thought of the Divine. In actual fact, and
as occult investigation will always insist, the physical
constitution of Abram, or Abraham as he was called later
on, was entirely different from that of everyone living
around him. The organic constitution of other human
beings was not such as would have enabled them to unfold
inner activity of thinking through a special instrument.
Thinking was possible for them when they were free of the
body, when forces were activated in the etheric body; but
they had not yet developed the instrument for thinking in
the physical body itself. Abraham was actually the first
in whom the physical instrument for thinking had been
elaborated in the real sense. Hence—although this
must not be taken too literally—he is not
incorrectly called the inventor of arithmetic, the
science dependent primarily upon the instrument of the
physical body. Arithmetic is something that in its form,
and because of its intrinsic certainty, comes near to
clairvoyant knowledge, but it is essentially dependent
upon a bodily organ.

Thus there
is a deep and intimate connection between a faculty in
which external forces had hitherto been used for
clairvoyance and one which now made use of an inner organ
for the activity of thinking. This is indicated when
Abraham is spoken of as the inventor of arithmetic. He is
therefore to be regarded as the first personality into
whom was implanted the physical organ of thinking, the
organ through which man, by means of physical thinking,
could rise to actual thought of the Divine,
whereas formerly it was only through clairvoyant vision
that he could have any knowledge of God and of the
Divine. All such knowledge in ancient times was the
outcome of clairvoyance. To rise to the Divine through
thought required a physical instrument and
Abraham was the first into whom it was implanted. And as
here it was a matter, of a physical organ, the whole
relation of this thought or concept of the Divine to the
objective world and to the subjective being of man was
different from what it had formerly been, when a physical
instrument was not involved.

The thought
of the Divine had formerly been grasped through the
wisdom preserved in the Mystery Schools and could be
conveyed to one who had developed to the stage of being
able to have perceptions in the etheric body, free from
the organs of the physical body. But the only means for
the transmission of a physical instrument to another
human being is physical heredity. Thus if what
was of salient importance for Abraham, namely the
physical organ, was to be preserved on the Earth, it had
to be transmitted from generation to generation through
heredity. It is therefore understandable that the element
of racial heredity, the transmission of this physical
attribute through the blood flowing down the generations,
was of very great importance in the Hebrew people.

But a
physical attribute that appeared for the first time in
Abraham, resulting from the crystallization and shaping
of a physical organ for comprehension of the Divine
— such an attribute had to be established.
Transmitted by heredity from generation to generation, it
penetrated ever more deeply into the nature and
constitution of man and took firmer and firmer hold there
as the effect of heredity grew progressively stronger.
Hence we can say: it was necessary that what had been
imparted to Abraham in order that the mission of the
Hebrew people might be fulfilled, should reach greater
perfection in the course of being transmitted from
generation to generation through heredity. And in thc
case of a physical organ this was the only possible
means.

If the
Individuality we have come to know as Zarathustra was to
be provided with as perfect a physical body as possible
— that is to say, a body containing an organ
capable of grasping, in a human physical body, the
thought or concept of the Divine — the physical
instrument once implanted in Abraham had to be brought to
the highest attainable degree of perfection; it had to be
inwardly consolidated through heredity and to develop in
such a way that a body suitable for Zarathustra might be
produced, with all the qualities needed by him in his
physical body. But a physical body that was to be of use
to Zarathustra could not have developed to greater
perfection by itself, separated from the rest of man's
constitution; all the three sheaths, physical, etheric
and astral, had gradually to be perfected through what
physical heredity flowing down the successive generations
was able to impart to them.

There is a
certain law in evolution of which we have often heard in
connection with thc development of the individual human
being. A particular period of this process is from birth
until the sixth or seventh year of life, during which the
main development is that of the physical body. The period
of the development of the etheric body is from the sixth
or seventh year until the fourteenth or fifteenth. The
period of the development of the astral body is from then
until the twenty-first or twenty-second year. Such is the
law, based on the number seven, governing thc development
of the individual human being. The development of the
outer sheaths of humanity in general through the
generations is governed by a similar law and the deeper
aspects of this process have still to be considered.

Whereas in
the course of every seven years the individual completes
a stage of development, until his seventh year that of
the physical body, which becomes more and more perfect
during this period — so the whole structure of the
physical body of mankind in general, developing as it can
do through the generations, reaches a certain completion
after seven generations. But heredity works in such a way
that the qualities transmitted do not pass from one human
being to his nearest descendant in the immediately
following generation; the salient qualities and
attributes cannot be transmitted directly from father to
son, from mother to daughter, but only from father to
grandson — thus to the second generation, then the
fourth, and so on. The number seven is basic in the
process of heredity through the generations; but as every
other generation is skipped, we have, in reality, to do
with the number fourteen.

The special
physical constitution established in Abraham could reach
the peak of its development after fourteen generations.
But for this process to take effect in the etheric body
and the astral body as well, the development which in the
case of the individual proceeds during the period from
the seventh to the fourteenth year would have to continue
through a further seven, or in reality, fourteen
generations, and then through a still further period of
seven (or fourteen) generations, starting from the
fourteenth year in the case of the individual human
being. In other words : the physical constitution
established in Abraham, the racial progenitor, had to
develop through three times seven or rather three times
fourteen generations; the development had then taken
place in all the three sheaths — physical body,
etheric body and astral body. Thus the process of
heredity through three times fourteen generations, i.e.
through forty-two generations, made it possible for a man
to receive in the physical body, etheric body and astral
body in a state of perfected development, what had been
imparted to Abraham in its first rudiments.

Thus after
three times fourteen generations, beginning with Abraham,
we find a human body impregnated with what had been
present in Abraham in its earliest rudiments. Only a body
of this kind was suitable for Zarathustra in his
incarnation. This is also made clear by the writer of the
Gospel of St. Matthew. In the table of generations,
fourteen generations are expressly enumerated from
Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian
captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus
Christ. Through these three times fourteen generations
— in the sequence of which one is always skipped
— the complete development has been achieved of
what was imparted to Abraham for the mission of the
Hebrew people. This was now fully impressed into the
principles of human nature and thence could arise the
body needed by Zarathustra for his incarnation in the
epoch when a completely new impulse was to be brought to
mankind through him.

The wisdom
underlying the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew is
indeed profound. It is essential, however, to understand
what is indicated by these three times fourteen
generations. In the body that it was possible for Joseph
to provide for Jesus of Nazareth there was contained the
essence of what had been present, in its rudiments, in
Abraham; this had streamed into the whole Hebrew people
and could then be concentrated in a single instrument, in
the sheath used by Zarathustra by whom the incarnation of
Christ was to be made possible.

Notes:

1. See Occult
Science—an Outline, p. 21. From Rudolf
Steiner's Preface to the first edition.
(1909).